


Petaluma

by stylusmaleficarum (cygnes)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 01:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/stylusmaleficarum
Summary: Richard drives Jared to meet with some of his old friends from the Vassar crew team. A few minor complications arise.





	Petaluma

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://stylusmaleficarum.tumblr.com/post/173642474437/jarrich-for-7-or-15-from-the-ask-meme-your) on tumblr, for the prompt "fake dating." I've made some minor stylistic edits, but the content is the same.

“Richard, I know this is an imposition, but would you mind driving me to meet some friends next week?” Jared says.

“What are you, fifteen?” Gilfoyle says. Even Jared ignores him.

“I’m having a procedure done the evening before, and I’m not supposed to drive for twelve hours due to the anesthetic,” he goes on.

“What, uh. What kind of procedure?” Richard says.

“Oh, just standard diagnostics for someone with my presumed family history,” Jared says. Breezy, blithe, like this is a normal thing and not something that should make all Richard’s internal organs seem to clench up. “I have someone to drive me to my appointment, but everyone seems to be busy the next day.”

“So take an Uber,” Dinesh suggests.

“Well, I did consider that,” Jared says. “But they’re beta-testing the self-driving models around here now.”

“Yeah?” Richard says. He’s distracted, already back to half-listening. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Dude,” Dinesh says. There's enough reproach in his tone to make Richard look up. “Do you not remember TechCrunch?” It takes him a second to make the connection. Because yeah, of course he remembers TechCrunch, where he cracked middle-out compression, and… where Jared was in rough shape because he had been kidnapped by a self-driving car.

“Jesus, fuck, _right_ ,” Richard says. “Yeah, no, makes — makes sense. Totally legit. I can take you wherever.”

“Romantic,” Gilfoyle says. “Is that Shakespeare?”

Dinesh saves Richard the trouble of coming up with a retort by throwing a stress ball at the back of Gilfoyle’s head. He misses, but the sentiment is appreciated.

—

According to both Jared’s GPS and Jared himself, driving up to Petaluma will take about an hour and a half. Jared explains the night before that he wants to get an early start, both to avoid traffic and so that he can be there in time to help his friend Mara set up for the other guests. It’ll be some friends from the old crew team: two who live in California, one from Montana, and one all the way from Vermont.

“I’ll be happy to introduce you,” Jared says, “but I wouldn’t insist that you stay. It’s always awkward to be among strangers who are intimate with each other already.” _Intimate_. That word sticks, somehow, in Richard’s mind. He tries not to think about it. “There are some lovely parks in the area, and I highly recommend the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum. Did you know the area was once known for its egg production?”

“I did not,” Richard says.

“You’ll have the opportunity to learn all about it,” Jared says. “Just make sure not to lose track of time! It’s easy to get lost in historical ephemera.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Richard agrees, distracted. “So how was your thing today?”

“Oh, you know,” Jared says. He doesn’t seem inclined to say more until Richard squints at him and shakes his head to indicate that, no, he definitely does not know. “I’m a little tired. More from the mental strain. I’ve always hated being knocked out.”

“Then, uh — get some rest. We’re leaving early tomorrow, right?” Richard says.

“I’ve set your alarm,” Jared says, saluting. And, okay, Richard has some questions about that, like how the hell the person in the house who’s least qualified to hack into his phone apparently did. “Goodnight.”

“Yeah, you too,” Richard says. And then, when he hears the door to the garage close, he mutters to himself, “What the fuck am I doing?”

“You are being an idiot for your friend,” Jian-Yang says from the kitchen. Richard startles hard, feels like he’s about the jump out of his skin.

“Jesus, Jian-Yang!” he yelps. “Don’t — you can’t sneak up on people like that!”

“I was not sneaking,” Jian-Yang says around a mouthful of yogurt. (Richard has never bought yogurt, but there always seems to be someone in the house eating it.) “You were just thinking too loudly.”

“Yeah, okay, goodnight to you too,” Richard says.

—

Jared sleeps most of the ride up. Which is weird, because Richard thinks of him as a morning person. But he looks over at the passenger seat fifteen minutes into the drive and Jared is out like a light. His head is sort of tipped forward, which doesn’t look comfortable. Knowing Jared, there’s probably an ergonomic neck pillow stashed somewhere in the back seat or the trunk, but Richard would have to pull over to look for it, which would probably wake Jared up, which also seems not ideal. So he keeps driving, following the GPS’s Australian-accented directions.

It goes pretty well for most of the way, until the GPS tries to direct him onto a road that’s closed for post-wildfire repairs and refuses to redirect him when he drives past it. Because, you know. Roadblocks. Richard’s arguing with the GPS is what wakes Jared up.

“Are we lost?” Jared says.

“No, we’re not _lost_ , but fucking — Steve Irwin’s ghost won’t give me an alternate route, and one of the roads is closed.” He slaps his palm against the steering wheel.

“Okay, well, I think I still have my old road atlas in the glove compartment,” Jared says. “I’ll navigate for you.”

“And could you turn that thing off?” Richard says, nodding jerkily at the GPS.

“Oh, sure,” Jared says. Maybe a little warily, but he hadn’t been awake for the hideous offense that provoked Richard’s ire. (Make a u-turn? Like, are you fucking _kidding_?)

So they get there eventually, but not early enough for Jared to help set up like he had wanted to. Or early enough to park in the driveway, but parking on the street might be good because it means Richard can make a speedier getaway. Though he hasn’t yet decided where he’s going to go. That museum, probably, or any of the other places listed in the email about sightseeing in Petaluma that Jared sent him around 2 a.m. There’s a — a seed vault? And some kind of place that makes cheese.

“Should I just… go? And you can text me when you want me to pick you up?” he says.

“If that’s what you’d like,” Jared says. “Really, Richard, whatever you want to do. I can’t overstate how grateful I am that you’d do this for me.”

“No, it’s. I mean. It’s fine. Probably good for me to get out of the house a little.” He rubs a hand down one side of his face.

“If you’re amenable, I could introduce you,” Jared says. Right, that was what he said last night.

“Sure,” Richard says.

“I don’t want to pressure you, if you don’t want —”

“Seriously, Jared, it’s fine,” Richard says. “I’ll say hi to your friends and then see the sights. It’ll be — great.” He sounds unconvinced even to his own ears, but it’s good enough for Jared, who beams. Jared leads the way to a side gate, assuring him that everyone will be in the backyard.

Given the fact that he knows this is a gathering of Jared’s friends from the women’s heavyweight rowing team at Vassar, Richard shouldn’t be surprised that most of the women sitting around the picnic table in the back garden look like Amazon warriors, but it's kind of overwhelming in real life. There’s one small woman, but even she looks like an athlete.

“The prodigal son!” one woman says, smiling. She gets up and gives Jared a hug, a kiss on each cheek. “Did you hit traffic on the way up?”

“No, we ran into some roadwork and had to improvise,” Jared says. At ‘we,’ all eyes turn to Richard. “Richard, this is Mara,” (the woman hugging him, all Dante Gabriel Rosetti curls on top of a Xena physique) “Jeanette,” (olive skin, dark hair prematurely greying but in kind of a hot way) “Angie,” (red hair, strong cheekbones, super pale) “Allison,” (dark skin, short hair, probably an Instagram fitness model, _Jesus_ ) “— and, oh, this must be Maddy! I’ve heard so much about you.” (This last would be the small woman; almond-eyed, freckled, crows’ feet crinkling at the corner of her eyes when she smiles at Jared.) “Everyone, this is Richard Hendricks, my partner.”

“About damn time,” Angie says, “given how much you talk about him.” Richard picks up on what she must mean a split-second before Jared, just in time to see it dawn on him.

“Oh, no,” Jared says, glancing apologetically at Richard. “That’s not —”

“We haven’t really had that conversation yet,” Richard says. He ducks his head, looks down at the brick-paved walk. “The whole ‘what are we’ thing.”

“I hate ‘partners’ because it sounds like you’re cops or lawyers, you know? Too professional,” Allison says.

“Oh, that’s why I like it!” Maddy pipes up. “Are we gay, or private detectives?” She laughs. Fuck, she’s cute. Richard feels like a troll who wandered into a meeting of woodland elves. Mara gets them each a glass of peach iced tea — real brewed iced tea with actual slices of fresh peach floating in it, not the powdered pre-made kind — and Richard... stays. Knowing he shouldn’t, but nobody seems to actively want him to leave. It’s nice.

Maddy’s is Allison’s girlfriend/partner, and they met on a Facebook group for people who qualified for the summer Olympics but didn’t make the final cut. Allison rows, Maddy’s an archer. Maddy, quick to laugh, calls them both a couple of sore losers. They live further up north. Jeanette is the one from Montana, near Glacier National Park. She shows them pictures on her phone, including of one totally blackened mountainside. So then she and Mara start talking about wildfires, and conservation, and Angie takes out _her_ phone to show Jared some pictures of a red-tailed hawk that had been hanging around near her house for a while.

“Shit, I thought I had pictures of the elderberry bushes on here, too, but I must have deleted them after I put them on my computer,” she says. “Mobile devices, right? Never enough storage.” Jared looks over at Richard encouragingly. Which means Richard has an excuse to talk about compression and peer-to-peer storage for a solid fifteen minutes, and Jared’s friends ask smart questions, and it’s like the ideal test group they never had when they were working on Pied Piper as a platform.

“It all would have fallen apart without Jared,” Richard says, looking across the table at him. Jared looks — dismayed? Which is weird. “I mean, I almost ran the company into the ground like six times. But this guy right here. He kept us above water.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Jared says. “It was a team effort.”

“Is it difficult keeping boundaries between work and your relationship?” Jeanette says. “I mean, god, if I worked with my husband, I think I’d probably strangle him.”

“I’m not very good at that,” Richard says. He smiles at Jared, who now looks… almost upset? “Jared wanted to try ‘bifurcating our relationship’ when the company was restructured, but it didn’t exactly work out.”

“Richard, can we talk for a moment?” Jared says, standing.

“I mean, sure, I guess,” Richard says. He follows Jared inside, into the kitchen.

“Why are you doing this?” Jared says. His voice is low and urgent and, yeah, definitely upset now.

“They just seemed happy for you, you know?” Richard says. “I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“If they’re happy for me, I want it to be for something real,” Jared says. “This isn’t real, and.” He stops short, takes a shaky breath. “You’re making me _lie_ to them, Richard. To my friends. To people who care about me.”

“What, like I don’t care about you?” Richard snaps, too-loud.

“That’s not what I said —”

“I try to do something, something _nice_ for you, and you. You throw it back in my face,” Richard says. He can feel his face heating up. The back door opens and he turns to see who it is, ready to tell off anyone who interrupts, but the look on Angie’s face stops him.

“Jared, are you okay?” she says. She’s holding a tall glass, empty except for ice cubes. It’s just an excuse. She didn’t come in to get more cucumber water or iced tea or whatever she was drinking. She came in because she heard raised voices. (Because she cares about Jared. In a way that’s real, that’s selfless, and even if that wasn’t what Jared meant, maybe he had a point.)

“Fine,” Jared says. His body language disagrees: arms crossed tight over his chest, hands gripping his upper arms.

“God,” Angie says, shaking her head. “It’s like you end up dating the same person every time. And it’s not your fault that you’re some kind of asshole magnet, but do you have to keep going out with them?”

“There was Jake,” Jared says. In his keeping-the-peace voice, which Richard knows well. “You liked Jake.”

“You dated Jake for, like, a _month_ ,” Angie says.

“Well, I decided I didn’t want to stay in New York,” Jared says, too-reasonable. “And neither of us wanted to date long-distance. We’re still in touch. He’s getting married, though I’m not invited, for obvious reasons…”

“Wait, what happened? Why wouldn’t he invite you?” Richard says. He’s wound too tightly, too ready to react in a way that doesn’t fit the situation. Sight unseen, without knowing any details, he’s offended on Jared’s behalf. Angie looks at him, disbelieving.

“Are you kidding? You’d invite an ex to your wedding?” she says.

“I mean, if it was amicable, why not?” Richard says.

“What is wrong with you?” Angie says. It doesn’t sound like a rhetorical question. It sounds like she wants an answer. She puts her glass down on the counter hard enough that the ice cubes clink audibly.

“Do you want to take a walk?” Jared says. He reaches out and touches her softly on the elbow. “Just around the block.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” Angie says. They head toward the front of the house. Richard goes back out the back door and finds the rest of the women staring at him.

“Should I leave?” he says. “Like, should I call an Uber, or a Lyft, or.”

“I’m going to take it as a good sign that your first thought wasn’t to drive away and leave Jared stranded here,” Jeanette says.

“Yeah, no, I mean. Of course not. It’s his car,” Richard says. “You’ve known that Volt longer than me, right?” It’s a weak attempt at a joke. Jared’s friends do him a favor by ignoring it.

“We all worry about him,” Mara says grimly. “Angie especially. The first couple years after college, they stayed close. When he moved out here, she was still his first call when anything happened, even though she was too far to actually come if he needed anything.”

“That’s probably why,” Allison says. She runs a finger around the rim of her glass, damp with condensation, making it hum. “I always thought so. He didn't want someone who'd actually come running.”

“You know she almost called the Santa Clara police one time?” Mara says. Richard shakes his head. “He called her in the middle of the night. I only heard about it later. Never got the details, but — it sounded bad. She’d know. She doesn’t want anything like that to happen again.”

“I wouldn’t. I mean. I’ve been shitty to him, because that’s how I am with everyone, but I wouldn’t. Hurt him. On purpose.” Richard’s still gripping the back door, holding it half-open, probably letting all kinds of bugs into the house. He needs to hold onto something.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s on purpose,” Maddy says. And, like, she just _met_ Jared. But her voice is low and rough and she sounds like she might be speaking from experience.

“Yeah. So. I should go, right?” Richard says. He shakes his head, glances toward the side gate.

“You should wait and ask him if he wants you to,” Allison says. Looking down into her glass, still making it hum. “I think.”

Richard goes around to the front of the house and sits on the front steps. Angie doesn’t even look at him when she and Jared round the corner. She goes straight to the backyard without a word.

“Hey,” Richard says.

“Hello,” Jared says.

“So, I’m sorry,” Richard says. “And if you want me to leave, I will.”

“I don’t know what I should say,” Jared says. “I don’t know what would be easier for you.”

“I could take the car into Petaluma until you want me to pick you up, like we planned,” Richard says, “or. Or I could go back on my own, if spending the drive with me would be too much. _Or_ ,” he’s struck with inspiration, which means there’s a 50/50 chance that he’s about to make everything way worse, “we could both go into Petaluma for the afternoon, do the Historical Library thing, and look at seeds, and buy cheese, or. Whatever. Maybe stay over somewhere.”

“What are you asking?” Jared says cautiously.

“Do you want to go out with me?” Richard says. “Like, for real. A test drive, I guess, and if it really sucks we can just pretend it never happened when we get back to Palo Alto.”

Jared goes down on one knee in front of Richard, like he’s about to propose. “Yes,” he says. “I’d like that.”

“But you’re driving,” Richard says.

“It’s been more than twelve hours,” Jared says. “So that’s alright.”


End file.
